The Sea
by The Drowned World
Summary: As Paul and Echo go on a mission to stop the world's Dollhouses, their most difficult job will be Washington, D.C. There, Paul begins to heal, and finds an old friend named Seeley Booth, just as the Rossum Corporation threatens to destroy everything...
1. Prologue: The Deep

**A/N:** This is something I'm writing in my spare, spare time, so while I'm writing this I'm aware that I'm not even sure when this thing is going to get posted. It will, I have faith in that, so I'm still writing this right now. This entire story is **Ptera_Waters'** fault. I mean it. I was just innocently browsing through _Bones_ stories when I stumbled on the most fascinating crossover with _Dollhouse_ pairing Booth with Ballard. The idea is pure hotness, and it makes sense in a fun sort of way, and I couldn't get it out of my head, so this is what came of that. Blame this entire story on Ptera; in fact, if you don't like it, it's Ptera's fault! (Not really. You know I love you, don't you, Ptera?)

**Summary:** After dismantling the Rossum Corporation mainframe at the end of "The Hollow Men," Echo and her team still have a long way to go to stomping out the last of the Dollhouses. Their most difficult job will be Washington, D.C. There, Paul Ballard rediscovers an old friend named Seeley Booth and finds that he has to redefine his life and his decisions, even as the remnants of the Rossum Corporation are threatening to rise up and take everything away from him once more...

**Warnings:** This is a **slash** story. That means it will contain sexual content between two men. I'm warning you now in **big bold letters!!!** so that if anyone has any objection to this they'll be adults about it and _not_ read it. Also, this isn't technically a crossover, just to warn you guys: it will contain characters from _Bones_ – most notably Seeley Booth, Temperance Brennan, and Angela Montenegro. It is, however, firmly set in the _Dollhouse_ universe and contains almost no _Bones_ mythology in it.

**Spoiler Alerts for "Dollhouse" and "Bones"!!!:** This story is set in _Dollhouse's_ second season, immediately after the twelfth episode, "The Hollow Men," and during the ten-year span between "The Hollow Men" and "Epitaph One/Epitaph Two: Return." In terms of _Bones_, this is going to assume that you've seen through about three episodes into season five, the current season of _Bones_.

**Rating: T** (Right now, the sex isn't going to be that heavy and the violence not so gruesome. If anything about this changes, the rating will change, but I think it's going to stay pretty okay on _teen_.)

**Pairings:** Seeley Booth/Paul Ballard, mentions of Paul/Mellie and Paul/Echo, Tony/Priya (aka Victor/Sierra), mentions of Topher/Bennett, mentions of Boyd/Claire, allusions to Booth/Bones.

**Note:** The title of this story is derived from the two albums that inspired this story (in case you haven't read my works before, I'm highly influenced by music while writing and I usually post a soundtrack playlist to each story that I write): "The Sea," the second album by Corinne Bailey Rae, and "The Open Door," the second album by Evanescence. Both start in a dark place and rise toward a hopeful ending, and the allusions and metaphors regarding the ocean particularly helped the artist in me label this piece.

**Disclaimer:** "Dollhouse" was created by that mastermind known as Joss Whedon, with some help from Eliza Dushku with the concept. It is owned by those TV Show-cancel-happy monsters known as the Fox Network and by Mutant Enemy Co. "Bones" was created by Hart Hanson and is based on a really quite fascinating book series penned by Kathy Reichs. It is also owned by Fox, though Fox has been much kinder to "Bones" than it has to "Dollhouse." Sigh. In any case, I'm making no money nor do I intend to, I'm just having fun. If I did own them, Paul and Echo would have gotten together before the end of the damn series and Booth would have had sex with half of the staff of the Jeffersonian before finally marrying Brennan. Sigh.

And so, with all of _that_ out of the way:

Dollhouse

_The Sea_

Prologue: The Deep

_The sea_

_The majestic sea_

_Breaks everything_

_Crushes everything_

_Cleans everything_

_Takes everything_

_From me_

"The Sea" by Corinne Bailey Rae (_The Sea_, 2010)

Stepping into the Dollhouse once more, Paul Ballard was struck by how comforting it was to see something familiar. There was a vague sort of horror in him that he could almost associate the Dollhouse with a feeling of _home_, but what else was there? Echo was worried about him, but he couldn't do anything about it. After they set in place all of the locks and reactivated the security system, they'd each gone their separate ways. It made sense; they all needed space. And, according to Echo, they were going to have to keep the Dollhouse as a base for at least the next month while they recuperated and planned their next move.

Topher especially needed to lay down for a while. The man was close to crumbling; any further pressure and that brilliant mind of his would snap like a toothpick in the mouth of a pit bull. _Thinking of pit bulls_, Paul thought as he watched Adelle DeWitt herd Topher into his office with a matronly look on her face. She'd changed, certainly – they all had. Adelle gave him a look as she guided a mainly numb Topher into his office and shut the door behind her. The glass was shattered on Topher's enormous windows overlooking the Dollhouse proper, but she led him behind a door leading to his sleeping room for privacy.

Tony and Priya were headed for the showers and some much-needed privacy of their own. Priya looked somewhat shell-shocked still, which Paul supposed couldn't be helped. The artist was a kind and giving soul, and her head was a mess right now. Tony himself was playing his cards close to his chest, but the way he was looking at Priya was good. At least they'd have each other in the coming months.

"_It isn't over, Paul," Echo said softly, her too-wise eyes seeing things that he could not see. They were driving back to Los Angeles, leaving a smoking ruin and mountains of police cars and Rossum's private security army behind them. Adelle was driving with Topher in the front seat, and Tony and Priya were squished together like ants in one of the pilot seats. The other held the unconscious body of Whiskey, still imprinted with Clyde 2.0 – or at least, that's what Echo told him. He didn't understand any of it. He was still staring backwards, wondering what the explosion had done to Mellie's body._

"_What do you mean?" he asked, though he wasn't really listening. She squeezed his hand, her small and deceptively weak-looking hand clasping his._

"_They want to celebrate. But all we did was take down the mainframe, take down the guiding hand. There are still more than twenty Dollhouses, each with their own staff and what's left of the technology in them," she explained. She said nothing about the dark, haunted circles under her red eyes, or the bruises and bloody marks springing up all over her beautiful form. He knew intellectually that that beauty had stirred great feeling in him once, but all that was left was hollow knowledge. Paul was a doll now, and Echo had been stolen from him to keep him alive._

"_Someone's going to have to finish the job," Paul whispered, staring out of the window._

"_Yes," Echo said simply. She didn't have to say that it would be her leading the assault. She'd never rest until Rossum was finished and their prisoners freed. He knew her well enough by now. He also knew that he'd help her, for his own reasons._

Echo was now going to sleep in her old sleeping chamber. She was badly hurt and needed a doctor to tend to her, but until they sorted out the mess that the bastards at Rossum had done to Claire Saunders, there wasn't anyone in the house with medical knowledge but Echo herself, still drawing on the nursing skills of her Rebecca Mynor imprint. Topher had shown a spark of his old curious self again when Echo had told him how she could control the muscle memory sets he'd gifted her with for each imprint.

In the last week, they had all been defeated on so many levels that Paul was still more than shocked that they'd managed to come out on top somehow. When Echo had done the impossible and fought her way out of the Attic with a mission to find Caroline's memories of meeting the founder of Rossum, none of them had ever expected what they had unleashed within their midst. _Boyd. Boyd Langton..._

Paul felt an agonizing twist in his guts, and he forced it down. A power-hungry maniac, Boyd Langton had helped the original Clyde Randolph found Rossum in the first place. When Caroline had stumbled into his grasp, he'd found the final tool he'd wanted in his plans for global domination: her spinal fluid. Whenever the gene within that spinal fluid was exposed to the mind-wiping technology of the Dollhouse, it grew stronger, eventually allowing Caroline/Echo to survive the wipes intact altogether. And so Boyd had disguised himself as the moral center of the Dollhouse, becoming Echo's handler in a twisted father/daughter relationship, the implications of which were twisted enough to make bile rise in the back of Paul's throat.

Boyd had played them all for fools for years, putting Adelle and Topher each through hell as he forged them into the weapons he'd believed would be his "family" after Rossum erased humanity and left those who were administered with Echo's cure behind as the only human beings left. And when Topher and Bennett Halverson had nearly recovered Caroline, Boyd had seduced Claire Saunders and used her weakened mental state to coerce her into taking her revenge on Topher by murdering Bennett in front of him. _And what did that get her? Sacrificed to Clyde 2.0, with her mind jettisoned off into the techno-ether where broken dolls get thrown_, he thought as he wheeled the woman's unconscious body into the medical wing where she'd once taken care of them all.

When Echo had fought through it all to download Caroline's personality within herself, Boyd had interfered, but not soon enough. According to Echo, she had all of Caroline's memories, but she, Echo, the true soul of whatever she was, had evolved far too much. Caroline was gone and would never return, no matter how she lived on in Echo.

The physical pain she'd been through in that final fight, including getting her spinal fluid tapped by a deadly machine, had been nothing to Echo compared to having to fight Boyd, Paul knew. He himself had trusted the man more than anyone else in his life other than Echo, and Boyd had triggered Mellie's sleeper-assassin trigger in an effort to kill Paul and Mellie at once. _Well, his plan half-worked_. Paul fought down the images of Mellie's lifeless body jerking to a bloody halt at his feet, and bowed his head. In a twist of sickening irony, Topher had used Boyd's own weaponry on him, erasing Boyd's personality and leaving him a doll. Echo had turned him into a suicide bomber at the heart of the headquarters to take out the system mainframe, which Topher assured them all had shut down the Attics worldwide and killed Rossum's central computer system.

According to Echo, they hadn't harvested enough of her spinal fluid to have put her life in danger, but Paul had a feeling that she'd be sleeping for a while. She was exhausted; they all were. He finished tightening the straps on Whiskey/Clyde, making sure to follow Echo's instructions and leave nothing within arm or foot reach of her body and tightening the head restraints to ensure that she/he didn't try to commit suicide by snapping his/her own neck. When he was satisfied, he injected their final dose of tranquilizers into Whiskey's arm and left her to sleep.

Paul couldn't sleep, no matter how tired he was, and he couldn't face Echo right now, or anyone else. All he wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry, but he couldn't even do that. He was beyond tears. Feeling like a raw nerve, Paul headed into the only empty, private room left – the swimming pool. He closed his eyes and emptied his mind as he peeled his shirt off and shucked his pants and his underwear off. Naked, empty, and utterly exhausted beyond sleep, Paul slipped into the warm, silky water and let it wash over him, settling into its rocking depths and wishing more than anything that he truly was a doll and that none of this was real, that it was all an engagement that he could wipe away whenever Topher emerged from the programming room.

"_Please don't do this," he begged, and something flickered in those cold, dead eyes as November's face became Mellie's once more. Large doe eyes that had begged him for love, for sex, for peace, for solace filled with tears as her entire body shook as she forced herself to lower the gun, and he had _meant_ what he'd said, damn it; they were both dolls now and all they had left was what they felt. She loved him, and he loved her, no matter how confused he was or how empty._

"_Paul," she whispered, and it was stunning how much _pain_ this woman could emote with that one syllable that took his breath away and then the gun was turning toward _her_ and NO! "You made me feel real..." a murmur, a whisper, a promise of love from lips made for kissing as a gentle woman surrenders to love and to reality and no matter how he reached for her it didn't matter as a look of utter peace washed over her face and in those tears leaking from her eyes there was something _holy_ and real, and that was when she turned the gun on herself and blew her brains out, dark matter spattering the walls and blasting through silk-smooth hair he'd run his hands through as she saves _him_, dark, meaningless him and that's her _blood _washing down his face..._

_NO!_

The first tear trickled out of the corner of one of his eyes as the water washed over his face and took his body into its comforting depths.

* * *

**A/N:** Inspiration for this scene came from the original (and vastly superior) _Dollhouse_ pilot, "Echo," with Echo holding herself underwater. I'd also like to credit Miracle Laurie, the actress who portrayed November/Mellie/Madeline Costley over the course of the series; she was absolutely stunning in "The Hollow Men" and I hope that she goes on to greater things after this.

And, in fact, just to add to all of that: congratulations to the entire cast and crew of _Dollhouse_ on the second season, which was just a remarkable feat of television, and thank you for finding a way to bring a masterful conclusion full of closure for us fans of this strange, lovely, and darkly disturbing short-lived television show.


	2. Chapter 1: Sweet Sorrow

**A/N:** Unfortunately, there will still be no Booth in this chapter, as there's some wrapping up to accomplish in Los Angeles before our intrepid group skips off to D.C. This chapter is a little depressing, but it sets up the main action of the story, as well, so it's necessary. I'm still fairly proud of it, anyway, though I will issue a warning: there's a bit of existential angst in this story, but then, can you really blame Paul Ballard after everything the Dollhouse put him through?

Also, after this chapter, this story will firmly enter AU territory, though I'm going to attempt to keep the characters firmly in-character rather than out of it, even though they'll be interacting with a whole new playground and group of people who run it.

I chose the quote at the start of this chapter because I don't see _Romeo & Juliet _as a tragedy the way most people do; I thought it was a tragedy because it was so senseless in the deaths it described, and as most deaths are senseless, I thought the general moodiness of it would fit. In case anyone's interested, it came from the celebrated Balcony Scene of the play.

So, with all of that out of the way:

Dollhouse

_The Sea_

Chapter 1: Sweet Sorrow

"_Yet I would kill thee with much cherishing._

_Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow..."_

—from "Romeo and Juliet," Act II, Scene II (William Shakespeare)

They began a memorial wall the next day, which was, oddly enough, Topher's idea. The man who had once scoffed at even the suggestion of a human being possessing a soul had penned himself in his office for a few hours and came out with simple construction paper letters spelling out "To Remember" in red. They all gathered in DeWitt's old office, which Echo had pointed out as being a risk. Now that they'd cut the head off of the snake, as Echo had herself once put it in this very office, what was left of Rossum was likely to lash out with no warning. But none of them said anything about this. Instead, they all trooped up there and watched as Topher solemnly glued each letter to the wall, letting the sun hit them.

They'd all brought pictures, tokens, little things here and there. Adelle had some candles in her office and she placed them on the table underneath the letters. Topher went first, putting an image of Bennett Halverson on the wall. He didn't light a candle or say any words – he didn't have to. They'd have been hollow. Instead, he slowly traced the outline of her lips with his fingers and backed away. Adelle didn't go to him. She was staring at the wall herself, a curiously fixed, closed expression on her face. Paul's hands shook as he taped a picture of Mellie on the wall. It was small, one he'd found in the file labeled "November" in Topher's office.

She was smiling in it, though, most likely snapped during her life as Madeline Costley, long before the Dollhouse had found her and killed her. _Before_...he lit the candle and watched as the illumination lit up the brown of her too damn expressive eyes. He didn't say anything, either. What was there to say? Tony and Priya were clasping hands and staring at Echo with an expectant look. There was still something of the doll-like placidity to Priya, somehow, or maybe that was just how calm she was in her real life. Echo had an odd light in her eyes as she walked forward and put a picture of Boyd Langton on the wall. He was smiling in it. Paul made a sort of strangled noise in the back of his throat, but Echo didn't turn around.

Instead, she turned and walked from the office without lighting her candle. Tony and Priya left soon afterward. Adelle led Topher out, who was still shaking and seemed unable to function on his own. Maybe he couldn't. It wasn't healthy, anyway. Paul, however, stayed, looking at the wall of the lost, unable to move for a long, long time.

**888**

They all spent the better part of two weeks simply resting and relaxing in the Dollhouse, an unfathomable concept. The huge space echoed emptily with the lack of staff and dolls to fill it, but each of them seemed to prefer the space. Thanks to the machinations of Boyd Langton, they'd each been through their own private circle of Hell over the past year, and now that the final confrontation with the head of the Rossum Corporation was over, it was like the walls of calm they'd built up for themselves were crumbling.

Until Topher was...back to himself all the way, Whiskey's body was being kept unconscious in her old office. Paul took it upon himself to check on her once a day and ensure that the medical bed and IV bags she lay with were unchanged. Echo had set up the arrangement, calling on her skills as a nurse to keep Whiskey unconscious and alive. Echo herself had staked out the main floor of the Dollhouse as her space, moving with purpose through the tai chi areas and the tables and sofas. She slept on the platforms the dolls had once received massages from.

Topher stayed in his office, for the most part, though sometimes Adelle would lead him out, walking with him through the balconies and talking to him in a s oft voice, drawing him into conversation. Tony and Priya were still in the honeymoon phase, Paul supposed, and they were staying pretty well shut up in the bed chambers. Paul stayed near the pool, sleeping on some bedding material he'd found in the bed chambers. If he could sleep in the water, he would.

They all met up for lunch and dinner, as it was usually either Echo, Adelle or Priya making food, as Paul couldn't be trusted near an oven and Tony's idea of a quick fix was to open a cold can of ravioli and work on it for an hour or so. Conversation around this was stilted and ended quickly, making the experiences as awkward as possible, but none of them wanted to be left alone for too long, even if they didn't necessarily want company.

How did one go on, after finding out that all the actions, thoughts, motivations that fueled a person were merely manipulated by the personification of human evil in a twisted attempt to build a strong family behind him before taking over the world? Boyd had loved them all, except for Paul, he'd said. Echo, his daughter and the source of the inoculation against being wiped; Topher, his son and the amoral genius who could be trusted to bring forth the key to unleashing the mind-wiping technology against the world; and Adelle DeWitt, his sparring partner and iron-backed director. Working behind the scenes, he had fooled them all and pushed each and every one of their weak points until he'd shattered them and built them back up to his idea of what they should be.

And Paul and Mellie had just been objects in his way, swept aside and knocked about like a child who's grown bored with an uninteresting toy. The fact that Mellie's death was the result of a cold and calculated move to remove gnats from Boyd's eye made Paul feel like bile was rising in the back of his throat. Boyd had forged them all, even Paul, into family, and the very fact of that made them want to avoid each other, but they'd been through so much together that the thought of never seeing each other again was repellent. Even though he was now gone, Paul felt that even the legacy of Boyd Langton was watching them like a psychologist studying rats in a maze.

Adelle finally came to him one day with Echo on her heels and asked him to sit down on the green couches in the main living area. "I've made a decision, but I feel that it should be run by the two of you before proceeding," she began, sounding more formal than he'd heard in a while, but maybe she didn't know how to talk to them anymore. Paul knew that _he_ was still floundering, but then...

"Why us?" he said aloud. Echo had settled into silence, still poised in that strange stillness she'd possessed even as a seemingly mindless doll, watching them both and taking in more than he supposed he would ever understand.

"Because Topher is still...indisposed, and Priya has made it clear that she wants nothing to do with the Dollhouse, and Tony seems to follow her lead, leaving me the two of you," Adelle said tiredly. "It's about Whiskey."

"You're going to restore her original personality," Echo guessed.

"No," Adelle said flatly, making Echo's brows raise in surprise. "The woman that Whiskey was before entering the Dollhouse was...she was rather insane, actually. Her parents allowed the Rossum Corporation to bring her to the Dollhouse as a form of treatment. Her name is Alice Samuels. She was raised in a very old-fashioned religious fashion by her grandmother for much of her life, and so when the girl began to show signs of schizophrenic behavior her grandmother diagnosed the girl's condition as demonic possession and attempted an exorcism," Adelle explained.

"God," Paul said in disgust, looking away.

"Yes," Adelle continued, slumping back in her seat. "As you can imagine, the process did likely irreparable damage to the girl's psyche. She was taken back into custody by her parents, who were forced to admit her to a mental hospital before we were contacted. Now, if Topher were back to himself, he could likely piece together her original personality with her painful memories excised and her condition firmly under control, but he's not, and the safer of the two options seems to be to simply give her back the Dr. Saunders imprint, and heavens knows we could use a doctor around here again, after...everything." She trailed off awkwardly.

"I'm okay with that if Paul is," Echo said softly, watching him with an odd expression behind her eyes.

"Me?" Paul asked, surprised.

"I trust your judgment," Echo said, though he had the distinct sense that she was fishing for something else. He didn't have anything to offer her, though, except the truth.

"It sounds like a good idea," he finally mumbled. "You should probably get that done."

"Excellent," Adelle said briskly, sounding much happier now that she had a firm goal and a plan of action. "I'll prep the chair with the correct settings." She headed off toward the office as Echo slowly stood up. Paul watched her stretch with the grace of a feline and felt something like the pang of a feeling. She was a very attractive woman, it was true, but he didn't think of Echo that way. Maybe that was a byproduct of being a doll? Paul tried to fight back a headache. There was too much going on and too much to work through, and he didn't even know how to start.

"You should get some more sleep," Echo advised him, smiling at him gently, though there was something very sad in her doe-brown eyes. "You look like you're tearing yourself to pieces."

"I am," Paul said baldly, slumping back in his seat with a defeated thump.

"She really loved you, you know," Echo said softly. She met his gaze, and he was struck as always at the force behind her eyes, the knowledge of a hundred minds in one conglomerate staring out of her, focused on him. The effect was disorienting, to say the least, and she dropped her gaze, as if psychically aware of the effect it had on people. "Mellie, I mean. I know that you're confused, and scared, Paul, but you're still _you_. They can't take that away from you unless you let them. She didn't die for no reason. She died fighting against them to her last breath. She was a hero. And she wouldn't want you to be doing this to yourself." Echo bent down and brushed a kiss lightly against his forehead. "Trust yourself, Paul. You know what's real in here." She placed a hand on his chest, directly above his heart, before she turned and walked away, leaving him alone with his confused thoughts and the ghosts of tears on his face.

**888**

When they brought Dr. Saunders back, she was a wreck. She tried to tear at her face, to deepen her scars, and Paul and Tony had to fight through her hysteria and strap her back to the hospital bed she'd laid in. Topher looked like he'd seen the spawn of the devil and ran back to hide in his lab, looking more than ever like a small child. Paul found it vaguely ironic that the last time he'd been standing over this bed, he'd murdered the serial killer Terry Karrens in his coma, while the last time Whiskey had been in the bed she'd had the mind of a cold-blooded killer possessing her body.

She quieted after they put her back to sleep, though she whimpered and once or twice whispered Boyd's name, reaching out with her hands to find nothing next to her and withdrawing even more into a curled ball in the middle of the bed. It was disheartening and sickening to watch, and Paul found himself more often than any of them the only one willing to sit by her bedside for the first week that she was back. She eventually managed to convey her story to him, and he was surprised how moved to pity he was, as he'd been perfectly comfortable in the shell of self-pity and isolation he'd built up around himself these last few weeks.

After suffering through a near breakdown when she'd found out that she was not, in fact, Dr. Claire Saunders but instead the broken doll Whiskey given a new task rather than released after Alpha cruelly disfigured her face, Claire had, with Boyd's council, fled the Dollhouse to find her own way in the world. Frightened, agoraphobic, alone, and confused, Claire had finally called the number that Boyd had given her after two months on her own. Boyd had gallantly come to her rescue, sweeping her off of her feet and taking her to live with him, playing out the romantic fantasy of a prince taking her to his castle to live in wealth. She'd fallen in love with him, and when he finally asked her to come back to the Dollhouse with him, she had foolishly agreed.

When she had seen Topher so happily in love with Bennett Halverson, something in Claire had snapped. "It was like a living nightmare, when you think that you're sleepwalking but you know that it's a dream. But worse than that: I knew that the nightmare was real, but I had to live it out. Every single dark fantasy I'd ever had of making Topher Brink suffer for everything that he had done, it was like they were coming true in front of me, and I felt like vomiting but I couldn't even do that. I watched myself walk into the handlers' armory, take the first handgun I saw. I saw myself walk into his office, heard myself speak to that poor woman, and I felt the crack of the gun and heard the splatter of her insides hit that wall," she whispered as a tortured shudder wracked her body.

"And then everything went dark. I had walked to the garage and took the elevator to the roof, where a helicopter was waiting. They flew me to Tucson, to the Rossum headquarters. The whole time, I couldn't speak, I couldn't move. I just sat there, watching the world fall away from me. And then I walked inside and let them take me to an imprinting room. There were three machines in there. And it wasn't like the Dollhouse, where everything is kept under this veneer of gentility and romanticism, it was hard and cold and scientific, with three beds hooked up to machines.

"I don't know how long I lay there, until a man came in to see me. He was so..._twisted_. The kind of person that, even though you can't put your finger on _why_, you just want to run away from. And he told me that I'd played my part beautifully, and it was time for me to go to sleep, because the endgame was about to play and they needed a shot of Whiskey to pull it off. And then the world went dark. I was _gone_. And now I know that Boyd did that, to me. He _used_ me to throw you all off, and then when he was done using _me_ he moved on to my _body_. He put a _man_ in my _body_ just to fight Echo to stall for time!" Claire buried her face in her hands as her body shook with the force of her sobs, and all Paul could do was lay a hand on her shoulder.

He could hear what she _wasn't_ saying, however. Claire had no idea if she was still a sleeper the way that Mellie was, if the wrong word or turn of events would trigger a cold-blooded assassin within her to betray them all once more. It was the same disturbing thought that kept him awake at night. They were _dolls_, now, not _people_, their existence based on technology and nothing else. Who was to say wasn't _programmed_ into them? Paul left her to her grief and tried to deal with his own. But what was real and what wasn't? There were days when he felt as if his entire life from start to finish had been an illusion, and now that he was a doll truth was a transient thing that could hurt him if it could if he didn't fight it back.

If this was how _he_ felt, how the hell must _Echo_ feel, with a multitude of people living inside of her, fighting for control? Paul wandered through the plush halls and zen-like accoutrements of the Dollhouse like a zombie, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, losing himself in the tranquility of silence and the grim beauty of pain.

It would have perhaps gone on like this even longer if Echo didn't retrieve them all, one by one, and drag them to the main floor of the Dollhouse. When Paul arrived, Priya and Tony were sitting close together on one of the couches, not quite touching but not quite not, either. Adelle was leaning against a wooden pillar, while Topher was sitting on the bridge, letting his fingers trail through the cool water of the rock pool. Claire was dressed in the outfit of a doll, sitting calmly on the floor, her eyes conveying depths of pain that her face displayed nothing of, even through the macabre blinds of her scars.

Paul took his place alone on one of the couches. Echo waited until he was seated to begin speaking, standing before them like a general on a mission, which was still an odd experience as she was dressed as most of them were in the dolls' attire.

"It's been nearly a month since Tucson. We've all had time to rest and deal, and that's a good thing. People need that. _We_ needed that. But now we're needed for more, to deal with more, and that's what I have to ask you all to do." She brushed her long brunette locks from her face and regarded them all with her uniquely intense gaze. "I know that we all feel like we've achieved victory, but we're far from done. We blew up the mainframe, and we destroyed the founders of Rossum and their work on the mass-imprinting weapon. But that still leaves twenty-three Dollhouses in the world, each with their own Attic and their own dolls still imprisoned there by members of the Rossum Corporation. It's our job now to finish killing the snake that we wounded.

"We need to win this war." She turned to each of them. Priya's face displayed the horror that most of them felt openly, while Paul felt more like a numb shock radiating through him. After Tucson, to keep fighting? After everything that they had lost to... "I know that this is a hell of a lot to ask from you," Echo said, holding up a hand before anyone could protest. "This is my fight. It's something that I started and that I intend to finish. I wanted to offer you all a chance to come with me, but I know that I can't order you to do anything – that's half the reason we fought, right? So that we could make our own choices." She looked down, but when she met their eyes again it was with steely determination and iron-clad resolve. "And this is my choice. The other American house is in Washington, D.C., which is as good a place to start as any. I'm going to load up with supplies and start the trip there in three days. Anyone who wants to come with me is welcome, but if you have _any_ doubts, you should stay behind."

"That's insane," Paul protested angrily. "You couldn't do this alone, Echo!"

"Probably not," she agreed calmly. "But I've gotta try, Paul. Someone's got to."

"And what kind of friends would we be if we let you engage the enemy without backup?" Tony piped up angrily, standing up. "I'm in."

"Tony!" Priya protested, standing up. She looked at all of them, her eyes welling up. "I know that this is important. Of course it is! But haven't we all been through _enough_? We lost _everything_ to take out Tucson, and that was just _one_ building! You're asking us to travel round the globe, taking out locations as we go? How would we survive something like that? Why is it always _us_ who has to make the sacrifices? Couldn't we tell people what we know? We have enough proof!"

"We do," Echo agreed. "And a whole cabal of people Rossum has in their pocket looking to shut us down and start Rossum right back where we blew them the hell away from. If we start trying to get the government to see the truth, the first corrupt senator we try to expose will have us all assassinated in our sleep. We do what we have to do, Priya – no. We do what we _want_ to do. I don't _want_ there to be another Sierra out there being sent on engagements, Priya. That's why _I_ have to do this."

"That's not fair," Priya whispered.

"I know. _All_ of this isn't fair!" Echo exclaimed angrily. "I don't _want_ to be some kind of sick messiah saving the world from having their brains sucked out! But that's the card I drew. I don't have a choice, but all of you _do_. You've got this chance to take it. But either way, we should _all_ leave the Dollhouse when I do, because once I go active the remnants of Rossum – the copies of Clyde or Harding or Ambrose or whoever the hell is left now – are going to figure out that I wasn't the only survivor of Tucson, and the first place they're going to come gunning for is here."

"And the first people they're going to target is _us_," Priya snapped. "We _don't_ have a choice! And _I_ didn't even choose to be here! I wasn't offered a deal! I was _sold_ here by a _man_, a man that I _killed_!" She folded in on herself, and Tony drew her back to the couch, whispering comfortingly into her hair. Paul watched with a sort of pang, missing that closeness between two people but unsure why it hurt so much to watch.

"I'm sorry, Priya. But if you don't want to fight you're going to have to run, as far as you can and as fast as you can – change your name, use the supplies here to change your appearance," Echo rattled off. "But we all have to make a choice. There's a line in the sand now, and Rossum drew it: either you're with them or against them. I'm thinking that I'm going to erase them _and_ their damn line."

She turned on her heel and headed off toward the stairs, and after a moment, Paul followed her, leaving a grim silence in their wake. He found her in the handlers' lockers, opening the gun cabinet and inspecting the weaponry. "You know DeWitt could point you toward more serious hardware," he said after a moment. She wasn't surprised by his silent appearance, though he supposed that he should have expected that. From some of the things he'd seen around Echo these past six months, he was sure she knew he was in the room the millisecond he'd walked in and that she could have killed him a mere millisecond after that if she chose.

"She's coming with me, I could see it in her eyes," Echo said softly, loading a magazine into a semiautomatic and cocking it to check the speed. "Her and Tony, and I guess Topher since he pretty much follows where she leads. It's a little cute, actually, in a totally creepy and disturbing sort of way."

"What about me?" Paul asked quietly.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "Ever since Topher woke you up, you've...changed, Paul. The things that you've gone through and...I don't know you the way that I used to." She turned to face him, her eyes shining with emotion. "I'd feel much better about this if I knew that I had you to guard my back, though."

"I know," Paul said. "But I guess we'll both know in three days, huh?"

"I guess we'll know," she said. She turned away from him and continued sorting the deadly machinery in front of her to what she could carry and what she could leave behind. Paul left as silently as he had come. The door slammed shut behind him, and Echo paused briefly before she continued handling the guns.

**888**

Paul was swimming in the pool again when Priya found him. He surfaced to find her sitting on the end, dangling her feet in the water. Brushing his hair back from his head, he climbed out to sit. Priya handed him the towel he'd laid out, and he dried his face and hair off as he came to sit beside her.

"You're going to go with Echo, aren't you?" Priya asked, but it didn't sound like much of a question. "Tony is too, I can already tell. And then DeWitt will go because she feels like it's all a big responsibility, like she has to make up for all of Rossum's sins while she was still in their pockets."

"Priya, you don't have to go. I'm sure Echo didn't want you to feel _obligated_ to do this," Paul said hesitantly.

"Didn't she?" Priya asked, rubbing her hands together. "I mean, could _you_ stay behind after that little speech, and after everything we saw and everything we lost in Tucson? Can I just ignore everything that Rossum has done, and everything that they've done to _me_, just because I'd love to bury my head in sand?"

"Priya...I don't know what I want to do," Paul admitted baldly, and it was such a rush to release that from himself that he drew his knees up to his chest and felt more like a small child than ever. Priya leaned her head on his shoulder and clasped his hand. "Ever since I woke up from that damn chair...I mean, I'm not like you. This isn't the real _me_. I'm a doll. Paul Ballard is an imprint, and it's incomplete. There are things about my life, things that I should remember happened to me, but I don't. And it's so terrifying, the thought of the future. If I go with Echo, now, am I doing it because it's the right thing, or am I doing it because I have nothing better to do?"

"You're doing the right thing, Paul," Priya said softly. "Ever since I've known you, you've always tried to do the right thing. And Echo was right, you know. November died doing something that she believed in with all her heart – I was listening when she talked to you." She clutched his hand tighter. "The more that you blame yourself, the more that you damage her memory. She was pure, and so was her death."

"How was it pure? She killed herself so that I could live, and I..._god_," he ejaculated violently.

"It was pure because she loved you, and she did it out of love. You have to live, Paul. That's why she died. So that you could live."

Priya held his head in her lap while he sobbed, stroking her fingers through his hair like a mother with her child, and they stayed that way for a long while.

**888**

Paul stopped in to check on Claire the next day. She had stayed shut up in her office the entire time, haunting the medical lab like the Phantom of the Opera, hiding her face and her shame behind a white coat rather than a white mask. He'd smelled something burning and slid in, shutting the door behind him, to find her sitting in the middle of the floor, burning the Actives' files in her trash can, one by one, staring at nothing, the flames reflecting in her eyes eerily.

"What do you want, Mr. Ballard?" she asked quietly, startling him as she broke the silence.

"I was just seeing if you were okay," he settled on. He sat on the doctor's table, crossing his arms and waiting for her to speak.

"No, you weren't," she said flatly. "You're here because you want to ask me something, and I'd rather you just spit it out than dance around it like the others. I'm tired of being stared at."

"What did you do? When you found out that you were really Whiskey?" he finally whispered, the words feeling like they'd chewed their way out of his lips. She stared up at him, her doe brown eyes going inward.

"I was wondering when you'd come up to me like this," she admitted. "I've been in here going through the files that Ivy left behind of everything that happened while I was gone. There's an entire folder dedicated to you." She gestured carelessly to a thick file sitting on her desk. "I didn't want to burn it the way I've been burning everything else, in case you wanted to look through it."

"What would I find in there?" Paul asked, staring at it, though whether with fear or with longing, he had absolutely no idea.

"Medical jargon, mostly, but a fairly comprehensive personality profile that the two of them built. You weren't like me, Paul Ballard. You were _dead_. Your body breathed, sweated, secreted excrement, and your heart beat, but _you_, the essential animus, was gone, and Topher shoved an incomplete, fractured mirror-reflection of Paul Ballard back in you with a wave of his wand and tried to pretend that that made everything alright, when in reality you look like you're about to fall to pieces, aren't you?" Her eyes were shining, looking like she took an almost malicious glee in the discomfort on his face.

"I'm wrong, aren't I?" he asked, his entire body shaking. She was right; he _was_ close to breaking, close to shattering, a fine tension shaking and moving through his bones.

"Of course you are," she said flatly, standing up, her fists clenched. "But if _you're_ wrong, then what the hell am I? I know who she used to be; I read the file." She smoothed her hands over her body, indicating herself. "But I _live_. I remember, I think, I feel. _I_ shot that woman and _I_ fell in love with Boyd and _I_ almost killed myself last night." She rolled back her sleeves to display her wrists, which were covered in gauze. "But then I realized, Echo is right. I'm not the one who did this to myself. The people who did are monsters playing at being God. And we have to stop them. I'm burning these because I'm not going to let them get their hands on the dolls who were lucky enough to finally break out of this posh little prison."

"So you don't want to die anymore?" Paul asked, leaning forward, drawn in both by interest and a kind of horror.

"If I did, I could just go up there and terrorize Topher into dumping my consciousness back into the technological ether and infusing me with that poor girl's traumatized mind, bringing her back to life the same as you," she said cuttingly. "No. I'm too alive to go back to sleep now, and so are you, so don't go trying to drown yourself in that pool you've been swimming in so much lately, because I don't feel so keen on giving you CPR."

"You have an amazing bedside manor," he said hoarsely, feeling as scraped raw as if he'd just been thrown down a strip of asphalt.

"I used to," she said, sounding almost regretful. "Look, right now you're scared and confused. You don't know who you are anymore, and you don't know _what_ you are anymore, which is more important." She dropped his file into his lap. "But when I first came back, even though you knew that I was a murderer, you still just held me through the tears and let me get it all out, let me come back. That's why Echo needs you now, so much – because you're a good guy, Paul. You're stupid, and you make mistakes, and you're a little too good-looking for your own good—" He barked out a surprised laugh, startled into humor. She smirked at him. "But, ultimately, you'll always try to do the right thing. So maybe you should just focus on that right now, and the answers you're looking for will come to you.

"That's why Boyd hated you so much, I think," she continued, making him freeze. "You know, as much as he could rationalize what he was doing, taking over the world being for everyone's good, or whatever, you were never seduced by the power plays like he was in the end. You had every temptation thrown in your face by the Dollhouse: Mellie, and then Echo, and then being brought in to be a handler, and you could have abused all of that. You were offered money, and sex, and power, and you didn't buy any of it. You just kept working to bring the Dollhouse down, and Rossum, and everything that Boyd had worked for. So he tried to kill you, because you didn't have a place in his little family, because you were everything that he was not, and he resented you for that."

"Now," she said briskly, shoving him off of her table. "I've got things to do and bags to pack, apparently, and if you force me to play amateur psychologist much longer I'm going to charge, and the only thing you have left to pay with is what's between your legs." He blushed furiously and stumbled as she shoved him toward the door. "Pull yourself together and make your choice, Paul. That's the last I'm going to say about any of this. I know who I am."

The door closed with a snap behind him, and Paul clutched the file to his chest, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, or both.

**888**

That night, Paul went back to the memorial wall for the first time since they'd sit it up. He lit the candle underneath Mellie's picture, and he sat back down, trying to remember her laugh. He wasn't altogether surprised when he couldn't. His time with Mellie had been unreal, and he'd been a much different man back then. He was more like what Claire had said – a shattered reflection of _that_ Paul, the do-gooder who'd risk everything for the people he cared about.

"I wish...I wish that I shared your clarity, Mellie," he said quietly, not sure who he was talking to. "There was this _look_ on your face before you pulled that trigger of calm, like you'd finally figured it out, and I'm still flailing trying to remember how to swim."

"You'd be surprised how many people feel that way, you know," Adelle said from behind him. He didn't move to acknowledge her presence, and she slowly sank to the ground next to him. It surprised him a little, that the cold, distant goddess DeWitt would lower herself to a floor still stained with blood from the Rossum forces that she'd had killed in here.

"You're going with Echo?" he asked finally, as they both watched the flame dance in the flickering wind from the open door.

"Of course," she replied strongly.

"Why?" he asked.

"Did you know that I was a student of science when they approached me?" Adelle asked him. They still weren't looking at each other in the dim candlelight, almost like a confessional. "I was working towards my master's degree in neurology when I encountered a particularly difficult professor. I had just read a report by Dr. Alexander Rose on her groundbreaking theorems regarding the sciences of personality fixture and replacement, 'The Past Recaptured.'"

"I've read it," Paul acknowledged. "When I first took the case."

Adelle nodded. "I had to write a final thesis for the professor before I could move on. I had heard he was a Buddhist, and so I wrote a report on the philosophies of the science involved, the pros and the cons, and my theories on how this science could be used for the betterment of mankind. This paper, I was later told, reached the very head of the Rossum Corporation – Boyd Langton, though I didn't know that at the time.

"Instead of going into a doctoral study, the Rossum Corporation offered me the chance of a lifetime – an internship in one of their prestigious American laboratories. I packed my bags and moved to Tucson, Arizona, a bright, naïve and foolish young woman. While I was there, I played with science as recklessly as a child with a magnifying glass in bright sunlight. Mr. Brink was not the only one seduced by Rossum into developing something of a god complex." She smiled self-deprecatingly. "You've read about those early days – making monkeys learn complex dance steps and clapping games, and then small children, and finally fully adult personalities being shaped into new and intriguing shapes.

"I was placed at the Los Angeles Dollhouse when the very idea of a Dollhouse was first brought into existence, serving underneath two heads before being given the house as my own. For years I ran it with impunity. I placed myself so high above them all. I refused to call them dolls, you know; they were always Actives to me. In all my years, save for the five souls I placed in the Attic, I never reneged on a contract. My Actives were always released in perfect health back into the world with large amounts of money at the end of their five year term."

"You really believed in your mission statement, didn't you?" Paul interrupted, staring at her incredulously. "You really believed that you were doing something great, fulfilling people's greatest wishes. There are reasons that needs are so internalized!"

"As I've learned," she said dryly, the brief burst of humor causing his lips to quirk. "This past year, I've crumbled. I've faltered. I've had every one of my moral failings used to torment me by none other than the one person in this house I trusted to keep me morally accurate, in a rather cruel twist of irony. So you see, _you_ may blame yourself for what happened to Mellie, but her blood is on my hands, as is the blood of each and every individual lost these past months. What's happening to poor Topher is my fault. And so I have my penance: I am not a young woman anymore, Paul Ballard. I doubt you even know how old I am. I will most certainly die on one of these missions, which Echo is perfectly aware of. She knows why I am doing this, as do I. I assure you, I certainly do not _intend_ to die in a suicidal blaze of glory, and I will fight for both my life and the freedom of each poor soul in these other Dollhouses.

"But I _need_ to do this, ironically enough. And so I will." She stood up, and brushed her fingers through his hair lightly, before she leaned down and blew his candle out, leaving him in the dark with his thoughts. She left the door open behind her, however, waiting for him to rejoin the rest of them when he was ready.

**888**

When the sun rose on the third day, Echo stood alone in the middle of the Dollhouse proper, a bag full of clothing on one side of her and a bag full of weaponry and other practical supplies on the other. After a moment, Adelle and Topher joined her, each with their own bags and a bag of computer and tech supplies. Emerging together from the bed chambers with their hands clasped, Tony and Priya met them in the middle of the floor, their bags swinging from their shoulders.

Dr. Saunders, dressed in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, came out of her office with a bag full of clothes and a bag full of medical supplies. She and Topher eyed each other for a moment, but neither of them said anything, both turning to look away after a moment. Paul was the last person to come, a bag full of clothes in one hand and his gun in the other. He put his clothes on the ground and then holstered his weapon on his hip, where it always used to be when he was an agent of the FBI. Echo nodded to him gravely, and they all stood in a circle, waiting.

"Thank you," she said softly, finally, her steely face crumbling slightly into a smile, her eyes shining with emotion as they all stood next to her, friends. After a moment, she regained her composure and nodded firmly, before she picked up her bag and once more led them out of the Dollhouse to hunt down the monsters that had put them all in there to begin with. They marched behind her single file, and Paul brought up the rear. They took the stairs, and he allowed a slight smile to cross his face as he turned to regard the vast, empty Dollhouse, its prisoners finally free, shut down forever the way he'd vowed to do for so long.

"Goodbye, Mellie," he said softly, shutting the door behind them.

They all loaded into two of the Dollhouse's black vans, with Topher and Adelle in the first and the others in the second, as they drove out of the Dollhouse and into the bright California sunshine as they aimed for the highway east, east toward the rising sun and toward the house in Washington, D.C. Paul had the feeling that there was something in motion, but he couldn't name it and didn't care to. Whatever else happened, he'd find out who he was in Washington, he'd find his answers, and nothing would ever be the same.

**888**

**A/N:** So, what did you think? Like I said, somewhat lacking in action, but never fear, for next chapter we arrive in D.C., and there's plenty of potboiler there to work with, or at least, I'm hoping so, as I'd like this to not get boring for y'all. In the interest of that:

**Coming Next Chapter:** _Echo and her team arrive in Washington, D.C., to find that the Rossum Corporation is not nearly as stomped out as they'd hoped. A conference meeting has unexpected complications when Paul runs into a murder investigation and, leading it, the very last person he ever thought he'd see again: FBI special agent Seeley Booth..._


End file.
